Further study often seems the most appealing route to go down, and for many companies out there it’s often heralded as a must have for data science, but it isn’t always so and isn’t always pivotal in advancing your career.

To PhD.

A PhD is your original, unique research into something not necessarily covered from that angle before. The content of a data science PhD should showcase new findings in the field that will make an impact, or contribute to a particular subject. A lot of people pursuing Ph.D.s are driven by a passion for their area of study, more than thinking of a specific role they can enter into afterwards. They can take a long time to complete, so having a particularly keen interest in the subject, and passion in the field will drive your success. PhDs are also a gateway into being published at top conferences in your chosen field, like ICCV (International Conference on Computer Vision), NIPS (Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems) and ECCV (European Conference on Computer Vision) to name just a few, which undoubtedly has a huge impact on a researcher’s career path.

Carrying out and writing about such in-depth research shows your ability …